Civil Service Online Tests Explained: Which Test, How It Is Scored

The advert decides which Civil Service online tests you sit, not your grade. Each vacancy picks from eight tests: Verbal, Numerical, Judgement, Management Judgement, Work Strengths, the Styles Assessment, Customer Service Skills and Casework Skills. Every result is a percentile against a comparison group, and clearing the minimum makes you eligible for the next stage, not invited to it.

Your invitation email names the tests for your application. Match them against the table below. Four tests have pages of their own, linked from their rows; the other four are covered in full here.

Which test you will sit

Test selection is a local, discretionary choice made for each vacancy, and departments pay for the tests they use. That is why two adverts at the same grade can ask for different things. The only authority is the advert and the invitation email.

The broad pattern: the Verbal and Numerical tests, the Judgement Test, the Work Strengths Test and the Styles Assessment exist at every grade band and can appear on any advert. The Casework Skills Test is for casework roles at AO and EO. The Customer Service Skills Test is for customer-facing roles at AA, AO and EO. The Management Judgement Test is for roles between EO and SEO that involve managing other people.

None of the tests assumes specialist knowledge or experience, and the guidance is explicit that your answers must be your own.

The eight tests at a glance

Allow about an hour for each test. There is no benefit to rushing an untimed one. Any test closes after 25 minutes of inactivity and can be relaunched, so a dropped connection is an interruption, not a lost attempt.

How the scoring works

Your responses are compared with a representative comparison group and reported as a percentile. A 44th percentile result means you scored better than 44 per cent of that group. It is a rank, not a mark out of a hundred.

Two bars then apply, one after the other.

1. The system minimum. The platform applies a minimum standard for the grade level. Candidates below it are rejected automatically and are not invited to any further test in the sequence.
2. The recruiter's pass mark. After the deadline, the recruiting team reviews the full distribution of scores and sets the pass mark. They may raise it above the system minimum, considering how many candidates they can invite and the impact of the chosen mark on groups with protected characteristics.

That second step is why the official wording is that meeting the minimum standard "does not guarantee an invitation" to the next stage. Your score is fixed when you finish; whether it is enough is decided weeks later against everyone else who applied. A result that comfortably cleared the minimum can still fall below a pass mark set to shrink a large field.

No numeric pass mark is published for any of the eight tests, at any grade. Figures quoted on preparation sites are guesses. Your percentile and automatically generated feedback appear in the Civil Service Jobs application centre; for security reasons there is no feedback on individual questions.

Where the tests sit in the process

Recruiters are advised to run tests before the full application form, so candidates provide their supporting evidence only after clearing the test stage. The stated purpose is to sift out the least well-performing applicants early.

Where more than one test is required, they may be sequenced: you sit the first, and the invitation to the next arrives only if you clear the system minimum on it. Silence after one test does not mean you are through.

Every test deadline is the same as the application deadline. The official advice is to raise any technical problem at least two working days before the closing date, which rules out leaving the tests to the final evening. Once the deadline passes, the recruiter sets the pass mark and the applications above it go to the sift, which has its own timescale.

One more point catches people out: hiring managers may require anyone invited to interview to sit a supervised retake of a test. It is a check that the original result was your own work.

The Verbal and Numerical tests

These two measure general mental ability, the Ability element of Success Profiles, which the official guidance describes as the strongest predictor of job performance. They are available at all four grade bands.

Both are adaptive. A correct answer is followed by a harder question and a wrong answer by an easier one, so the test reaches a reliable estimate of your level with fewer questions than a fixed test. Three consequences follow. The tests are short: most candidates take 15 to 45 minutes, though you should allow an hour for each. They include unscored trial items you cannot distinguish from the scored ones, so treat every question as counting. And you cannot skip a question or go back, because the next question depends on your answer to this one.

In the Verbal Test you read a passage and then a statement about it, and answer true, false or cannot say. Judge the statement only on what the passage says, not on what you know. "Cannot say" is a real answer, used when the passage gives no basis to decide either way, and it is the option candidates most often avoid when they should choose it.

In the Numerical Test you are given a graph, a table or other data and a multiple-choice question about it. Have a calculator to hand; the guidance expects you to use one. Every graph is also provided as a table.

Both tests can be taken in English or Welsh. Neither question count is published, which fits the adaptive design: the length varies with your answers. A pass on either is banked for six months within the same grade grouping, but the two scores are separate. A Verbal pass does nothing for a Numerical requirement.

The Styles Assessment and the Customer Service Skills Test

The Styles Assessment for Behaviours was added in January 2026. It is a self-assessment against the Civil Service Behaviours: 276 pairs of statements, and for each pair you choose which is more like you and by how much. It is untimed, usually takes 45 to 60 minutes, and the percentile can be banked for six months. The platform can void a score where the pattern of responses looks random or over-repeated, so answering mechanically to get through 276 pairs is how to end up with no score at all. There is a limit of three attempts.

The Work Strengths Test is its counterpart for the Strengths element of Success Profiles, the same element the strengths questions at interview probe.

The Customer Service Skills Test is for customer service roles at AA, AO and EO and has three parts. In the first, untimed, you read a customer's message and choose one of three responses, then deal with a follow-up from three more. In the second, also untimed, you rate the effectiveness of four possible actions across six scenarios. The third is timed at ten minutes and tests accuracy: checking records for errors or entering details. Allow about an hour. A pass is banked for six months, unlike the Casework Skills Test it otherwise resembles.

Banking a score: the rules

A banked score means that when another advert within the window asks for the same test, your existing pass is used and you are not asked to sit it again.

Banking only works within a grade grouping, and the groupings are broader than single grades.

So a Work Strengths pass earned on an SEO application covers an HEO application in the same six months, but an EO pass covers nothing above EO. The Judgement Test is never banked because the behaviours it tests are chosen for each vacancy, so no two versions are the same.

Reasonable adjustments and the practice tests

Departments have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments, and the application asks whether you need one. The recruiter confirms it before you take the test. Supporting documents may be requested, but the candidate guide is clear that you should still ask even if you have none to hand.

What is available depends on the test. The timed sections of the Customer Service and Casework tests can be extended by 25, 50, 75 or 100 per cent. Paper alternatives exist for the Verbal and Numerical tests only. Video scenarios carry subtitles, British Sign Language and transcripts, and the tests are audited against WCAG 2.1 AA.

There are eight unscored practice tests, one per test, linked from the gov.uk online tests page. They are shorter than the real thing but otherwise look exactly like it, which makes them the most useful preparation available: you learn the response scales, the screen layout and, for the adaptive tests, what it feels like not to be able to go back. Sit the practice version of every test your advert names, under the conditions you plan to use for the real one.

If you fail

A fail ends that application at the test stage and nothing else. You can sit the same test again in any future application, and nothing from a failed attempt is carried forward.

Use the percentile. It tells you where you sit against the comparison group for that grade, which is more useful than any pass mark would be. A result close to the cut on a Judgement or Management Judgement test is more often a calibration problem than a comprehension one: your ratings were not separating "fairly effective" from "effective" the way the behaviour descriptors for your grade would, and the practice test is where to work on that. A low percentile on the Verbal or Numerical test points to mechanics: reading speed, comfort with "cannot say", arithmetic under uncertainty. A voided Styles Assessment is a response-pattern problem, not an ability one.

If the same advert reappears, the pass mark may differ next time because the field will. Your job is to move the percentile, and the feedback in the application centre tells you which way.